Content and Stuff

Thursday, 16 June 2016

Minimum E3 Fucks

So E3 is happening....or has happened, at time of writing I'm not to sure but that should give you good indication about how I feel regarding E3. Maybe I've gotten old or maybe I'm just a bit too jaded and cynical at this point but no matter how much I search my inner self I just can't find any fucks to give about this years E3 show.

It's sad really, it used to be such an exciting time. When I was a young kid, before internet and streams and all this fancy new age shit, E3 was something you could only really read about in a magazine. It was this amazing event with all these new games and all this excitement and it was the kind of thing I dreamed of going to. Then as I got older and streams of the show started happening there would be exciting times as we'd all ball into a room with takeout pizza and watch the shit live and chatting about all the announcements.

But with the new generation of games systems came a change in the way E3 was presented. The fun was taken away and the whole thing is delivered as a sort of business pitch by some dude in a suit telling us about "experiences" and how all these games represent "the future" or some shit. Buzzwords and professional sounding speeches book ended with cinematic trailers topped off with applause from an audience of industry people who may only be clapping so the dude on stage doesn't feel bad.

The E3 way of presenting games hasn't just become boring to me, it's offensive. How stupid do these companies think I am where if they write a nice speech and give me 3 minutes of cutscene I'm going to be like "OH YEAH FUCKING WOW, BUYING THAT DAY 1". All this talk of none-game related features like TV and social media linkage to try and appeal to that mass market because mainstream gaming has become all about safe bets and that huge budget for that sequel that whoever is making is going to go to waste. Even new IPs that are supposed to get us excited just stink of nothing more than retreading old ground. The best example I can think of for all this is Days Gone, a game that has so many The Last of Us vibes that I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't start life as a side-story expansion pack.

Not to say it's a complete bust. There are a number of things at E3 that did pique my interest a little bit and with all the games at the show it'll be hard to call any of them "bad" per se. I bet most of the games that appeared on E3 this year I'll pick up and at least enjoy to some degree but I just want the fun to be put back into this event. I can't get hype for cutscenes and I especially can't get hype for dudes in suits.

Whatever, interesting games ahead and fun times to be had but I'll be waiting for more detailed news down the road rather than getting excited now. Thanks for making me aware of the titles.....I guess.....